A Bold New Oedipus Makes a 2,500-year-old Play Strikingly Modern

Icke admits that when casting, he often thinks, “Who’s like this?” rather than, “Whose acting is like this?” He says that he wanted Manville to play Jocasta because he thought that she was extraordinary in Phantom Thread, and also, crucially, because she “feels like a mum”—which she is, to a son she raised after a brief marriage to the actor Gary Oldman; he’s now 36, a camera operator for film and television. For a similar reason, Icke wanted whoever played Oedipus to seem steady, principled, devoted to his family, and also like someone who could plausibly run for office and win. Strong usually plays villains (Robin Hood, Shazam!, Cruella, Kick-Ass) and spies (Kingsman, Zero Dark Thirty, Body of Lies, The Imitation Game, Deep State, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy—among others!), despite having a reputation for being supremely warmhearted. “He feels like he could solve your problems for you,” Icke says, and he was impressed by Strong’s “integrity and his articulate calm.” Three years ago, when Icke found out that he was going to be a father, Strong—who is married to the producer Liza Marshall, with whom he has two sons—was one of the first people Icke went to for advice. “I was like, Come on then. Tell me what you did. Tell me what I should do.”

I meet Strong at Wyndham’s Theatre: It’s the late-Victorian monument next to the Leicester Square Tube station, in the heart of London’s West End. This is where he performed in both A View from the Bridge and Oedipus, and so he’s able to show me around, pointing out where Maggie Smith used to have her dressing room. He moves through the building with the ease of someone who belongs there, or indeed, like a seasoned politician with a kind word for everyone. He’s also tall and lean, with a great voice—it’s easy to see why Icke would want his face on a campaign poster. Though when Strong describes his background, I wonder if it’s also not a coincidence that he’s played all those international spies. His name at birth was Marco Giuseppe Salussolia—his father was Italian, his mother Austrian. He went to school in England, and studied law in Munich—where he met drama students, and realized they were having more fun than he was. He defected, and by his mid-20s, he was at the National Theatre with small parts in King Lear and Richard III, studying the luminaries from the wings.